It is not the most common situation, but without eating or drinking it, we could end up at any given moment with our Android phone completely blocked and without the possibility, at least simply, of recovering it. Today we are going to review those things that we could try to do so that our phone can come back to life even if we cannot unlock it , at least to be able to recover its basic use.
There is no magic wand that will allow us to recover an Android phone that cannot be unlocked. There are many situations in which this situation can occur, and therefore each of them may have a different solution.
What happened to your mobile?
Logically, each situation is different when facing a problem of this type. But the most normal thing is that for some reason we have lost or forgotten the credentials to access the phone, in such a way that it is impossible for us to unlock it.
In these situations it is best to remain calm and think carefully about what tools we have at hand to regain access to the phone, even if it is sacrificing some type of information stored on it. Without a doubt, the first tool to be able to recover the phone is one created by Google itself for these situations.
Find and unlock your phone with Google account
To do this, what we must do is enter the Google ” Find my device ” tool that allows us precisely to access the phone remotely and even do what we need, reset the password to access the device. For this we must do the following:
- Go to “Find my device” from Google
- Click on the device you want to recover
- Select “Block”
- Enter the new password
- Confirm the password again by entering it again
In this way we will have been able to unlock the phone thanks to our Google identity, so this is enough to be able to unlock the phone in the first instance and thus be able to recover it again. This is the fastest way to unlock the phone, although it is the best possible case, the one in which we have recently stopped using, which is still with battery, and accessible remotely, otherwise this method would not work no problem.
Use a recovery tool, if you have a Samsung
This is a tool quite similar to that of Google , in fact its operation is very similar, although in this case logically it will only be able to recover mobile phones from the Korean brand. To do this you must do the following:
- Enter this web link
- Sign in with your Samsung account
- Unlock the phone by entering a new password to access it
With Google Smart Lock
As you know, Android phones have different smart unlock modes. These are designed so that we can unlock the phone in alternative and more comfortable ways. As for example by bringing a Bluetooth bracelet , or with any other device that can recognize our phone and even in a predetermined location, for example our home . But the problem is that this configuration process must be done before we find ourselves in this situation.
If you are one of the lucky ones, or rather farsighted, who decided to configure a device in this way, you can easily unlock the device in the same way. If you remember having configured Smart Lock, use that method that you had configured to be able to recover your phone again, since in those cases you will not need any PIN or password to access the phone again.
With ADB
This is a solution that is not suitable for any Android user, firstly because there is an insurmountable requirement that you probably have not configured before reading this, and because it is also somewhat more complicated than it may seem. Basically this is the Android debugging method, with which we can take control of the phone from a PC to which we have connected our phone via USB cable.
Thus, we have to make sure that our mobile has USB debugging activated , so that the phone and the computer can recognize each other with the necessary permissions. In the case of being able to connect your mobile with the PC using this method, there is a command that will eliminate any type of blockage from the device, as is the following:
- adb shell rm /data/system/gesture.key
Once we enter this command in ADB, the phone will restart without any type of active blocking measure . This means that you can enter it without having to enter a password or pattern that we had chosen before.
The last resort, but the most efficient
Without a doubt this should be the last resort, but unfortunately most of the time it is the only one available to us. It is about completely erasing the phone and leaving it with its original factory partition. This means that the phone will remain as if it were released again , when we only had to enter our Google account data to be able to configure it for the first time. And once done, reconfigure a password, pattern or PIN. Remember before having made a backup copy of the data, if it has been possible. To do this we must start in recovery mode as follows.
- Press the power button and volume down at the same time for a long time, in some mobiles the combination may include volume up
- Now the recovery of your phone opens, you can choose at least between English or Chinese language
- The options will be chosen with the volume or power buttons, in some through the touch panel
- Click on “Wipe data / factory reset”
- The phone will restart after a few minutes
Once restarted there will be no protection of the phone , but neither will any of the data that was available will be left. Since all the internal storage of the phone will have been erased. At least if we recover the Google account and other apps, we can reinstall all the apps we had and have the same settings and even wallpaper. The downside is that we will have lost precious time between deleting everything and restoring it, for not remembering the password, PIN or pattern.